Andrew Dominik Rewriting The American Remake Of Tell No One

The French film Tell No One started life as a novel by American filmmaker Harlan Coben, so it makes perfect sense that when Guillaume Canet's 2006 take on the material won rave reviews and healthy box office, an American remake wouldn't be far behind. But ever since Focus and Miramax got together to pick up the remake rights in early 2009 the film has hit a snag, both because Miramax finally fell apart entirely and, well, remakes of French films, no matter how acclaimed, aren't exactly guaranteed to be good investments.

Now the film has shown its first sign of life in a while, or least the first that we've been aware of. The Los Angeles Times reports that The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik has been working on a draft of the script, though it's unclear if he might intend to direct it as well. The story is a somewhat straightforward thriller, about a doctor who begins receiving mysterious messages from the wife he believed to be dead.

Dominik is also putting together an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates's pseudo-biopic of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, which has Naomi Watts attached to star. Presumably that would be a higher priority for him as a director if the Tell No One job became available, so I'd expect his duties on this to be limited to writing. Still, it's encouraging that a writer and director with talent like Dominik's is shaking some life into Tell No One, even if it is still being treated like an impossibly hard sell by the studios that stand to make some money off it. Because, come on, it's a crime thriller. Pretend it's a brand-new American film and the audiences who made Edge of Darkness a hit will be all over it.